Q&A: Retired London cop gives ‘unfiltered’ view of homelessness crisis in new documentary

It’s billed as an “unfiltered exploration of homelessness.”

Screening at the Forest City Film Festival on Sunday, the documentary atrocity is a passion project of a retired police sergeant from the London Police Service.

Nigel Stuckey, who worked for more than three decades in the police, set out to share the stories and struggles of some of London’s most vulnerable – those experiencing homelessness, addiction and mental health crises.

He takes to city streets, under bridges and into the woods to hear first-hand experiences to challenge stigmas while raising concerns about the lack of supports.

Atrocity premieres at the Forest City Film Festival in London this Sunday at 4.30pm in the Wolf Performance Hall.

LISTEN: Nigel Stuckey’s new documentary takes a look at London’s addiction crisis

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

CBC: Why did you set out to make this film?

Nigel Stuckey: I live in London. I worked in the police force for 32 years and I live in the inner city. I really believed it was a story that needed to be told. And I really wanted to find out what happened without the barrier of the uniform.

CBC: What worries you most about this crisis as a retired police officer?

NS: I would say it’s a lack of mental health services. We have people in central London who have serious mental health problems and are not getting treatment. One of the things I allude to in the film is that there’s a sort of in-between area where people are apprehensible. They are not violent or dangerous themselves, but they are not functional either, and these people are slipping through the cracks.

That mental health prevents them from being able to move forward, but also opens the door for them to self-medicate. So a lot of them are turning to illicit drugs and basically medicating themselves, which amplifies the problem. Mental health combined with illicit drugs is an absolutely terrible combination.

CBC: What did you learn from interviewing people for your film?

NS: Now I look at people on the street because many of them are medically compromised. And when we take that view of things, instead of seeing them as if they’re the problem, or they’ve done something wrong, or they’ve made decisions that are bad, now we look at it through a different lens. And that lens is, in fact, that they have an illness, whether it’s mental health, addiction or physical disability.

They’re not getting the treatment they need and we actually have a lot of people on the street who are medically compromised without proper medical treatment and that’s an atrocity.

CBC: What was the reaction of the people you spoke to?

NS: Everyone I spoke to was more than happy to talk. They are people who have a story and want to be heard and many of them are ignored. After talking to a young man, he thanked me for talking to him. Can you imagine, every day you are sitting on a busy street and no one makes eye contact with you. Everyone walks past you acting like you’re invisible. You can imagine the impact it has on your psyche and how difficult it is for your emotional and mental health to be in this circumstance.

CBC: What do you want people to take away from this film?

NS: Two things. That there is an atrocity in our city. There are people in our city who are in dire circumstances who are medically compromised and basically left alone in the winter with very few resources.

And, secondly, to look at people experiencing homelessness from another perspective. Instead, look at them as medically engaged and understand that they are in many ways in an impossible situation.